Almost immediately, I heard her calling in an anguished voice that sent a chill through me.
"Come! Oh, come see!"
With a bound, I was at her side.
"
The camel," she murmured. "The camel!"
I looked, and a deadly shudder seized me.
Stretched out at full length, on the other side of the rocks, his pale flanks knotted up by convulsive spasms, El Mellen lay in anguish.
I need not say that we rushed to him in feverish haste. Of what El Mellen was dying, I did not know, I never have known. All the mehara are that way. They are at once the most enduring and the most delicate of beasts. They will travel for six months across the most frightful deserts, with little food, without water, and seem only the better for it. Then, one day when nothing is the matter, they stretch out and give you the slip with disconcerting ease.
When Tanit-Zerga and I saw that there was nothing more to do, we stood there without a word, watching his slackening spasms. When he breathed his last, we felt that our life, as well as his, had gone.
It was Tanit-Zerga who spoke first.